Latest news with #TheTippingPoint
National Post
3 days ago
- Business
- National Post
Card games and Tolstoy: How the Oilers pass the time in the air
Article content 'Yes, we're very business-like, it's important to be focused, but you can also have fun,' said Knoblauch, 'And, I don't think fun is going to distract anybody from what our goal is.' Article content Article content The coach uses the time on the plane to look at game film, figure out line combinations for the next game and, when it's all done, maybe take a bit of time to unplug from hockey. Knoblauch likes to read on the plane, and is currently working on Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. It's a book about how an idea is sparked, and how it can take hold in business or our social interactions. Over five million copies of the book have been sold, and it spent almost a decade on the New York Times' bestseller list. There are currently nine holds on the book at Edmonton Public Library, so it you read this story and want to borrow it, you're going to have to wait. Article content Article content When he's not playing cards or honing his racing skills on Mario Kart, defenceman Darnell Nurse also enjoys reading on the plane. Right now, he's in the midst of Leo Tolstoy's epic, War and Peace. Article content Article content 'I've been working at War and Peace by Tolstoy for, like, a month and a half, two months,' said Nurse. 'So, maybe I can find a way to finish that one.' Article content Article content While flying between the Miami area and Edmonton is pretty arduous, there are former FC Edmonton players who might be out there reading this article and snickering. When the now-defunct team played in the North American Soccer League, the Eddies would have to make a couple of visits a season to the Caribbean to face the Puerto Rico Islanders. And, unlike the Oilers, FC Edmonton's players and coaches had to fly commercial. The team would often not all fly together. Some players would connect in different airports. But, the best and quickest route would see the team fly to Minneapolis, then to Atlanta, and, finally, to San Juan. There were times that it would take the better part of two days to finish the route, and then the team would have to play in hot, humid, punishing conditions, then get back on a series of flights to return home. Article content
The Independent
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Can this book really teach people how not to be racist?
Twenty-five years ago, not long before 9/11, a young Canadian journalist of English and Jamaican origin named Malcolm Gladwell published a short book with a provocative subtitle 'how little things can make a big difference'. He called it The Tipping Point; his American publisher paid $1m for the rights; after a disastrous start, it rapidly acquired the status of myth. To a world fighting a 'war on terror', and consumed with ephemeral dread, Gladwell's 'little things' (Hush Puppies, broken windows, and the midnight ride of Paul Revere) became a new and entertaining way to look at social issues. Gladwell's message (how just a few people can affect positive change) was at once provocative and soothing. From The Tipping Point to Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking to Outliers: The Story of Success, which popularised the theory of '10,000 hours practice', Gladwell became a genre-master illuminated in the flattering light of international imitation by numerous wannabe bestseller writers (often journalists), most of whom possessed neither his witty intelligence nor his effortless storytelling. The Tipping Point became a millennial phenomenon that shaped a generation. Don't take my word for it. Gladwell's publishers have just released Revenge of the Tipping Point, a nonchalant audit of second thoughts by the writer who became, Bill Clinton said, 'part of the zeitgeist'. By chance, in this same season, we find The Science of Racism by Keon West, published with a throwaway Gladwellian subtitle ('Everything you need to know but probably don't – yet'). West, who quips that 'he has always been black', is a social psychologist with some impressive qualifications, who has drunk deep at the well of The Tipping Point, and makes an early pitch for a similar readership. 'In this groundbreaking study,' declares the jacket blurb, ' The Science of Racism … cuts through the divisive anecdotes and rhetoric with decades' worth of clear, factual, rigorous and quantitative science to reveal truths about racism that are moving and tragic, but also (somehow) funny and entertaining.' There's a good reason for this edgy having-it-both-ways overture. West cheerfully concedes the unsurprising truth that racism is a highly contentious topic on which – almost every survey shows – our society is hopelessly divided. From the first page, West's literary persona is assertive, challenging, and takes no prisoners. He despatches the critical race theory (every white person is racist) with glee, while simultaneously scorning those, like Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, for whom CRT is an ideology that interprets whiteness as merely an oppression and blackness as only victimhood. West's larger contention seems to be that, by describing his chosen subject as 'a science' (debatable) and his method as 'research-based' (indisputable), he's allowed to treat racism as a focus for provocative, contrarian zingers, and to find it 'funny and entertaining'. To this reader, that's a bad misstep, and one that steers this well-intentioned volume into some treacherous swamps. Next to our democracy, and now more than ever, gender and race are matters of life and death. In that triptych of dread (politics, sex, and colour), race, as West will know, is the unquiet monster that continues to disturb our peace. This would still be true, whatever the history. Moreover, once we braid 'race' with 'slavery', 'oppression' and 'genocide', these are deep and horrendous waters. To navigate this area of darkness, we need empathy as much as science. For instance, in contemporary experience, Black Lives Matter has been a profound global protest, an expression of solidarity with African Americans and Black society worldwide that demonstrates how deep and raw the wounds of racism are. Why then, is George Floyd cited just once in the index (p 215)? In his eagerness to introduce us to the 'science' of his research, West seems reluctant to explore even the most simple backstory to this harrowing subject. For instance, in one of West's principal book markets – the USA – 'race' is still inextricably associated with that historical crime in which both British and American society are deeply implicated. The founding father Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner who reportedly had a relationship with his slave Sarah Hemings, who most historians now agree bore him six children. In his last years, Jefferson became tormented by the threat of slavery to the American Revolution. It haunted him, he told a friend, 'like a fire bell in the night'. After the shocking death of George Floyd in 2020, Jefferson's fire bell began to ring more urgently than ever. West will have heard it – he cites many other examples of contemporary racism – but his attachment to 'science' appears to not have room for the racist detail of the Floyd tragedy, perhaps because 'science' was unable to dice and slice it for ready consumption. In many other areas, West makes the case for considering race through the lens of science. There's nothing glib about this pitch; he dismisses the 'snake-oil salesmen' whose 'scientific claims' are 'worthless'. On my reading, however, he doesn't go far or deep enough; worse, his dedication to 'factual, rigorous, and quantitative science' has an almost inevitable upshot: the breakdown of his scientific method. A chapter on the 'complexity' of his subject is anchored in data, and telling anecdotes, but having declared reverse racism a 'real, serious, and widespread problem', West dives down a real-world rabbit hole to declare that society needs 'to create a world in which we're all, regardless of race, treated equally.' Shortly after this, he concludes a fierce and persuasive attack on 'colour blindness' with a telling admission: 'It is silly to believe, of a problem as large and as powerful as racism, that if we ignore it, it will just go away.' Short on empathy, armoured with data, and focused on a popular audience, The Science of Racism often misses the wood for the trees. The chapter on diversity initiatives (DEI), which West wrote about in this publication, identifies many 'myths' and some uncomfortable truths, but it remains too 'scientific' to address the savage reality of Republican anti-DEI rhetoric that is currently underway. In the end, West hardly leaves his comfort zone – decades of academic research – to address what, to this middle-aged and privileged, white, male reader must be the nub, the simple historical definition of racism: 'A condition in which individuals are treated worse, excluded, harassed, bullied or degraded as a result of race and/or ethnicity, with sometimes fatal consequences.' Where do we go from here? In many ways, West has done us all a favour by setting out, with argumentative clarity, the areas of 'racism' that are no longer deserving of anguished white liberal scrutiny. Another new starting point might be to treat this subject as a profound historical curse of immense societal and global consequence, but not a forum for donnish mind games. In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Gladwell confesses to a youthful excess of certainty. He disowns his younger self, who was, he concedes, too cocksure and assertive. What he celebrates now is doubt, uncertainty, and the subtle nuances of ordinary existence. Perhaps West should be encouraged to borrow another leaf from Gladwell, and return to this subject of the most profound significance, which he knows intimately well, with compassion, modesty, and introspection.
Associated Press
05-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Emerging Markets Report: Trade Winds
An Emerging Markets Sponsored Commentary ORLANDO, Fla., March 05, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- There are moments when the earth proverbially moves under your feet, where winds of change alter your present circumstances one way or the other. It could be as direct as a new government regulation calling for more electric cars that drives EV purchases and lithium prices skyrocket. Or, it could be a celebrity on the red carpet donning a particular fashion that makes a generation rush to the store to grab their own like it. Malcolm Gladwell covered this well in his classic The Tipping Point which examines how even the smallest of things can make a big difference. For American Tungsten Corp. (CSE:TUNG) (the 'Company' (OTCQB:DEMRF) (FSE:RK9) it most definitely is not the smallest of things that could make an enormous difference. It's a new administration pushing tariffs and trade reform that may align with the Company's mission of onshoring, of American resource independence. And staying as apolitical as we always do in the pages of the EMR, we're not judging the president or his policies one way or the other. We are simply acknowledging that they exist, like weather, and ask ourselves what the impact may be for a company like American Tungsten if proposed tariffs create an advantage for domestic operators. Tungsten, for the uninitiated, is a 'critical mineral.' That's not our descriptor, it's an important designation by the government acknowledging its value. Tungsten is a critical mineral in the U.S. and Canada. In a recent press release American Tungsten made sure that the market knew how these shifting trade winds could fill its corporate sails. The Company is not subtle about its desire to be a leader in American energy independence. From the release: 'American Tungsten remains committed to strengthening resource independence in the United States. Tungsten is classified as a critical mineral by the U.S. government, owing to its use in high-strength applications such as defense, aerospace, and high-performance manufacturing. The potential imposed tariffs highlight the strategic importance of securing domestic sources for key industrial metals in the United States, reinforcing the necessity of a stable and self-sufficient supply chain.' O.K., we hear you. We like the idea of American resource independence too. But the release is also very clear about the potential economic benefit to domestic tungsten producers, that making foreign tungsten less economically attractive vis-à-vis tariffs sure should help the fortunes of domestic producers. And American Tungsten has that past producing tungsten mine in Idaho. Again, from the release: 'We recognize the potential impacts these tariffs may have on our industry and our stakeholders. However, as one of the few U.S.-based tungsten miners, we believe this recent development underscores the importance of domestic production to mitigate supply chain disruptions and reduce reliance on foreign imports. As Canadian and other foreign suppliers may face cost disadvantages, the Company expects to see increased demand from both industrial and government buyers seeking reliable, tariff-free tungsten supplies.' About The Emerging Markets Report: The Emerging Markets Report is owned and operated by Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC), a syndicate of investor relations consultants representing years of experience. Our network consists of stockbrokers, investment bankers, fund managers, and institutions that actively seek opportunities in the micro and small-cap equity markets. For more informative reports such as this, please sign up at Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 requires that any person that uses the mails to publish, give publicity to, or circulate any publication or communication that describes a security in return for consideration received or to be received directly or indirectly from an issuer, underwriter, or dealer, must fully disclose the type of consideration (i.e. cash, free trading stock, restricted stock, stock options, stock warrants) and the specific amount of the consideration. In connection therewith, EMC has received the following compensation and/or has an agreement to receive in the future certain compensation, as described below. We may purchase Securities of the Profiled Company prior to their securities becoming publicly traded, which we may later sell publicly before, during or after our dissemination of the Information, and make profits therefrom. EMC does not verify or endorse any medical claims for any of its client companies. EMC has been paid $275,000 on behalf of American Tungsten Corp. for various marketing services including this report. EMC does not independently verify any of the content linked-to from this editorial. 15701 State Road 50, Suite #205 Clermont, FL 34711 Maggie Caraway
